Maybe its her haunting refrains – no death can tear us apart – or maybe its her spiritually profound lyrics, but I’m almost certain her music can only come from a soul that has traveled a myriad universes, and loved and lost a myriad times, only to resurface, like a wave from an opposite and infinite shore, through the voice of Mirel Wagner. Wagner, who was born in Ethiopia and grew up in Espoo, Finland, has certainly been to the crossroads. At 7, Wagner, who’s record label biography alludes to the fact that her family name goes back the famous composer, was given violin lessons, and at 16 she was already writing songs and shyly performing them at open mics nights in Helsinki. She was subsequently discovered by Jean Ramsay, an American music journalist living in Finland who was impressed by her talent, and the next thing she knew she was recording an album. The recordings, financed by photographer and friend of Ramsay, Aki Roukala, were completed over two days, 12 songs straight – 9 of which can be found on her upcoming debut album which was recently released in Europe on  Bone Voyage Recordings, and will see its American release this March 27 on Friendly Fire Records. One of those tracks, No Death, is a tragic murder ballad in the same vein as Leadbelly’s In The Pines or Townes Van Zandt’s Waitin’ Around to Die. It is a song about love and tragedy, but tragedy with a brilliant and dark solution. Only when you listen closer do you realize that it is a song about necromancy and never has fucking the dead seemed so romantic: well its gonna get colder/ but my love will ignite/ what was left to smoulder/ I move my hips/ in her I am home/ I’ll keep on loving/ till the marrow dries from her bones. But maybe its the dead that will love us the most – without controversy and without conditions – no death can tear us apart. See Mirel Wagner’s music video for No Death after the jump.

Photograph by Hedi Slimane, London 

American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist John Cage, who died in 1992, would have been 100 this year and there are a slew of events to celebrate the centenary – including EVERYDAYJOHNCAGE in the city of Rimini, Italy where every single day of 2012 from January 1st to December 31st a viral system distributes publicly and privately, fragments and materials related to John Cage, and  an exhibition entitled Things Not Seen Before: A Tribute to John Cage, a visual art exhibition at Tempus Projects, organized by Independent Curator Jade Dellinger. Inspired by a line from a letter the curator (as a student – in the late 1980’s) received from the late, great composer concerning the work of Marcel Duchamp, Cage noted: “I am not interested in the names of movements but rather in seeing and making things not seen before.” Visit www.johncage.org to see all events.

On set: Brendhan Bowers and Adarsha Benjamin direct a music video for the So So Glos‘ track “Wrecking Ball,” today in NYC.

Brendhan Bowers has curated the seventh volume of Monday Mixtapes by Brendhan Bowers exclusively for Pas Un Autre. Don’t give up quite yet, this mix is for you. [Download].

Music video for The Pharmacy’s Dig Your Grave. Directed and edited by Brendhan Bowers, 2012. Off the Dig Your Grave EP on Kind Turkey.

The world was intolerable and mean to Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division, and he spit back with cruel, introspectively haunting lyrics in the hopes to close and heal the wounds that he so desperately tried and failed to lick clean.   In the end, love indeed tore him apart. On view now at the Manchester Photographic Gallery are 45 iconic images of life behind the legendary band Joy Division by photographer Kevin Cummings from their first gig in 1977 to Ian Curtis’ suicide in 1980. Exemplar: Joy Division by Kevin Cummins, Manchester Photographic  6 January – 26 February, Manchester Photographic Gallery is at Tariff Street, Northern Quarter, City, 0161 236 2446.

Brendhan Bowers has curated the sixth volume of Monday Mixtapes by Brendhan Bowers exclusively for Pas Un Autre. “I tried giving a go at hip hop to back up my street cred. A few New Orleans Bounce tracks I picked up from down yonder, a field recording from the South African Xhosa tribe which sounds like a hip hop hit to me, a weird Tanzanian angry rap number, and some commercial hip hop to tie it all together. The last number is an instrumental Paul McCartney song that I put on here in hopes of people free styling over it. I hope this one pumps you up. ” [Download].

Mathieu Lescop, known simply as Lescop, is making waves on the French pop scene.  John & Jehn, French lo-fi cult music duo based in London, released Lescop’s first EP on vinyl back in November off their label Pop Noire and last Friday Kitsuné released his insanely catchy track La Foret on their Parisien II compilation. Lescop has stated that he writes his lyrics strictly in French in an attempt to reinvent French Pop music. La Foret, a song with lyrics that hover in the same air as the dark romanticism of Rimbaudian symbolism, is a perfect example: “I feel your breath brushes my neck / a loaded pistol strokes my cheek.” Lescop will be playing at the Shacklewell Arms in London for the Pop Noire Party on January 24.

Music video for the Caged Animal’s track All The Beautiful Things in the World, directed by Jamie Harley